INDIA’S COVID-19 CRISIS: A NATION STRUGGLING TO BREATHE

ANVEE BHUTANI / MAGDALEN, HUMAN SCIENCES

In February, it seemed like India had COVID-19 under control. Coronavirus case counts had gone down, demand for ventilators was manageable and experts predicted that the country would be spared a major second wave. Yet in April, events started to shift with the pandemic sweeping through India, causing suffering and taking lives at a horrific rate. India has suffered over 200,000 fatalities and a total of 20 million cases.

Images that have gone viral on social media show bodies heaped in makeshift crematoriums. Hospital beds and oxygen are scarce. Desperate patients and relatives have turned to the black market or crowdsourcing for medicine, while others die in hospitals amid oxygen shortages. Recent days have seen repeated record infection figures, which are likely undercounts. The death toll from the virus has surpassed 200,000, as India again reported a record number of fatalities and experts cautioned that those numbers, too, were an underestimate. But how and why did things end up this way?

THE SOURCE: HOW DID THINGS GET HERE?

Back in early February, hospitalisation numbers had plummeted, and India was reporting about as many new cases per day as New York state, despite being 50 times as populous. The only likely explanation was widespread immunity, epidemiologists said at the time. India is now the epicenter of the global pandemic and a focal point of international concern. Experts are starting to think that immunity in India may not have been as widespread as previously believed. Some scientists argue that earlier waves of infections primarily affected the poor, but the current surge is reaching wealthier people who had just started socializing again after staying home during the first wave. Large group gatherings may have also played a role: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticized for lifting virtually all restrictions and holding massive political rallies, and a religious festival that drew tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims from all over the country has been linked to more than 100 cases. It is not yet clear if the presence of highly infectious new variants is the key factor that made India’s outbreak go from bad to worse. Scientists generally agree that it is likely that these variants played a role, but how much of a role is up for debate. However, both the UK variant and the Indian “double mutant” variant (now referred to as the Delta Variant) are driving outbreaks in Punjab and Maharashtra respectively.

India made coronavirus vaccines available to anyone over age 18 starting May 1. It is also curbing the

number of coronavirus vaccines that it exports and focusing on distributing those doses to citizens. Some cities and states have announced new lockdown restrictions, including curfews and bans on travel and nonessential activities. Modi, meanwhile, has said that lockdowns should be a last resort and declined to institute one nationwide. This has been a point that he has been largely criticised on. The government has also ordered social media platforms to take down critical posts that call attention to the catastrophic state of affairs in India, which many see as a case of misplaced priorities.

THE PROBLEM: A FAILURE OF THE MODI GOVERNMENT

Arundati Roy put it best when she said, “we are witnessing a crime against humanity”. The lack of concern about the average person in India has been absolutely horrifying.

India lacks an adequate public health system. It spends about 1.25%% of its GDP on health which is a lot lower than most countries in the world and even this is an overestimate. Even with the money they do spend, most healthcare is handled by the private sector which has become increasingly corrupt via its sleazy administrators, practitioners, referral system and insurance policies.

This massive privatisation of India’s healthcare, however, means that the most vulnerable in India are left out to dry. This is a failure of the Modi government and is the reason the country has been caving in on itself. The hashtag #ModiMustResign is regularly trending on social media and this is because despite his speeches at rallies and noble rhetoric, the truth is that Modi right now is rallying corpses. This time in office has already been marked by some of the most polarising and discriminatory times in the country’s history and this only adds fuel to the fire. India is struggling to breathe right now and this isn’t the fault of individuals but of the government.

LOOKING LOCALLY: WHAT WORK HAS BEEN DONE IN OXFORD?

The consequences of the coronavirus pandemic have made themselves felt in all areas of the world and the current situation in India is emblematic of this disruption. Caught between the threshold of its populated developing urban centres and its overburdened rural infrastructure, the pandemic has placed an unseen level of stress on India’s financial, medical, and social framework. Cases are rising at an unprecedented rate, with the daily number of new cases crossing 350,000, breaking records of single-tallies even during the first wave. In April, alone, India reported more than 5 million new cases, and more than 50,000 deaths, the majority of which were preventable. The lack of availability of oxygen cylinders, hospital beds and essential medicines for critically ill patients has overburdened India’s healthcare system. The state has been unable to handle the full capacity of the crisis, and individuals and local organisations funded through mutual aid efforts have stepped in.

It was and still is necessary for the international community, whether a part of the Indian diaspora or not, to come together and provide as much aid as possible to help the nation tackle this crisis and Oxford is well-positioned to do just this. Therefore, locally, students including myself as the President of Oxford India Society, worked on a variety of efforts to try to alleviate the COVID-19 crisis, albeit from thousands of miles away via monetary donations that would go to local organisations and charities that are providing immediate on-the-ground relief in the worst hit parts of the country.

In April as the COVID-19 crisis reached its peak in India, the Oxford India Society, Oxford Hindu Society and Oxford South Asian Society launched a fundraiser to provide direct and immediate relief for the spiraling COVID-19 crisis in India. The initial timeline for the fundraiser was 10 days to raise £10,000, but after reaching that target in just 72 hours, we partnered with the Cambridge University India Society, the Cambridge South Asia Forum, and the Cambridge University Bharatiya Society to launch a joint fundraiser with the new goal of raising £50,000 which we have now exhausted. Initial funds from the fundraiser have already been contributed to high priority NGOs in India such as The Raah Foundation (Maharashtra), SEEDS (Uttar Pradesh), The Delhi Solidarity Group and Mercy Mission (Bengaluru).

THE FUTURE: WHERE DO THINGS GO FROM HERE?

Given the mismanagement on behalf of the government and the fact that people are generally having to crowdsource support for themselves while battling COVID-19, India’s biggest support has been and will likely continue to be from outside of India. Countries across the world have stepped up to help. Singapore, Germany and the United Kingdom dispatched oxygen-related materials to India over the weekend. France, Russia and Australia sent medical aid, and even China and Pakistan, some of India’s biggest adversaries, have offered help. The European Union is coordinating with member states to provide oxygen and medicine, and World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the WHO would send additional staff and supplies to India. With all of this, pressure for the US to also provide aid increased. The Biden administration therefore committed to sending raw vaccine materials, ventilators, personal protective equipment, oxygen-related supplies and therapeutic medicines to India alongside mobilizing an American strike team of health experts and funding an expansion of Indian vaccine manufacturing capability. While the peak from the beginning of May has now dwindled, it will take possibly several years for India to recover, both in terms of public health and building back its economy. However, with the support from the rest of the world and increased press coverage of the devastating crisis, India is on the path to recovery.